Our local city council defeated councillor Rob Southcott's motion, supported by councillor Trina Isakson, to set aside one dollar per resident in next year's budget to join other BC municipalities in a class action lawsuit to require major fossil fuel companies to pay their fair share of climate change's growing costs [“Big oil lawsuit not supported by City of Powell River Council,” March 8].
Such a lawsuit could give legal heft to the "fair share" request that the city officially made to such companies in 2018. To my knowledge, opponents of Southcott's motion have proposed no alternative way to address climate-related costs, other than, implicitly, to stick it to taxpayers.
The outcome is disappointing but temporary. Neither the unfolding process of climate disruption, nor the costs it imposes on cities, nor the hundreds of residents who mobilized in the past year, are going away.
Together, we have put the fair sharing of climate costs squarely on the local agenda. That issue will re-emerge with the next unbudgeted climate-related calamity, like the storm that seriously damaged our sea walk in 2022.
City council may well reconsider when it gets down to the details of the 2025 budget, and sees how many other cities have joined the potential lawsuit in BC and the ongoing cases in the United States. A quarter of the US population now lives in cities or states engaged in legal action against Big Oil.
Ultimately, we need to elect a more forward-looking and visionary mayor and council.
The involvement of young people in the campaigns for both Sue Big Oil and a ceasefire in Gaza has been very heartening. I sense an emerging intersectional network that can raise our voices on a number of issues.
Bob Hackett,
Marine Avenue
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